04 March 2014

The Dead Flag Blues

The late 90s seem simultaneously just a freckle away and long long ago. It's my age, of course but it's also the music itself; so much music has come since 1997, so much that would've seemed impossible before that time, before the 20 became 15 became 10, before Godspeed entered into their punctuation war.

This record (the eff sharp eh? sharp infinity) roared quietly into existence, and in its way paved a hundred new paths, new places to go... For many people, this was their Velvet Underground, this finally stopped those velvet bores in their tracks. A million slowly revolving, evolving instrumental bands started up, some of them are only just coming to light. This record, even the final infinite loops, was something. And in this time there was almost nothing. It appeared in dead time. It appeared when all we had left was some DJ Spooky records to cling to.

There were records a little like this one before but none that encapsulated so perfectly a growing sense of anomie, the North American drift, the feeling that this really might be The Fukuyaming End Of History.